Announcement EA Sports Once again, the fiercest competition in football is not the Premier League title race, but the licensing battle between UEFA, FIFA and Europe’s top leagues.
Maybe just because my team had a bad season, but it really feels like football is melting.
I’m not a Barcelona fan, I’ve only been to Camp Nou once, but I’m having a hard time getting Lionel Messi to Paris Saint-Germain. It was like yet another triumph of corporatization in football, the slimy tribal fantasies of players’ unbreakable ties to their beloved clubs being unceremoniously squashed, and no one but Nike’s shirt printers were happy.
Not the casual fans who have lost the ideal image of one of the greatest players of all time, not the Paris Saint-Germain fans who come to boo and whistle, and certainly not the Spanish league La Liga, where Messi plays, and who has been with Paris Saint-Germain for a long time. They lost two of their most marketable players in a feud in 2018. The first was when Paris Saint-Germain triggered the $222m release clause in Neymar’s contract, which was supposed to be an absurdly astronomical sum that no one should really be paying.
Fewer big-name players means less international TV interest, so incomes are lower, competition is less intense, and wealthier teams lose more land.
In games, we’ve seen how powerful a strong brand can be, and how devastating it can be to not have it. You just have to look at Pro Evolution Soccer, or should I say eFootball, which “has better gameplay” over the years but slowly becomes less and less important as it doesn’t have a new West Ham kit every year.
Lower sales lead to seemingly lower investment until we’re left with free-to-play melted ooze, eFootball 2022 – an unbranded football game you can buy for £4 at Blockbuster on PS1. At least it’s technically cheaper now.
Serie A in FIFA 22 is also garbage, even if only a few of the best teams are replaced by normal teams.
Europe’s biggest teams trying to keep up with the spending power of state-backed clubs such as Paris Saint-Germain and Manchester City, and the entire Premier League – which is considered the most powerful league in the world and therefore receives the most TV bills – have taken the lead To the various shenanigans that rocked the football world.
To compete, teams like Italy’s Juventus and Europe’s Real Madrid and Barcelona have to go all out in the Champions League, Europe’s top competition right now and the most lucrative moneymaker for most teams. The Champions League is run by European football’s governing body UEFA, but they have been under pressure to provide top clubs with guaranteed access and a bigger share of revenue.
This has partly led to the disgusting but currently shelved European Premier League, a closed competition that will replace the UEFA Champions League, but without UEFA’s involvement, the great teams of history will be in Relegation to each other without qualification and no threat.
To fend off the challenge, UEFA sought the support of FIFA, the world football governing body in charge of the World Cup, but at least initially it didn’t get much support. To complicate matters, FIFA and UEFA also do not agree on many things.
Basically, FIFA’s biggest cash generator is the World Cup, but this only happens every 4 years. So FIFA wants to reduce the cycle to every two years, but that would interfere with European Championships, UEFA Nations Leagues and cause all sorts of other issues – so there would be friction.
Given all these warring factions, it’s pretty interesting that EA ditched the FIFA license to create its own EA SPORTS FC. For nearly 30 years, FIFA has been synonymous with the game of football, and losing that brand awareness is sure to hurt sales.
FIFA matches are very important to the football zeitgeist, and as watching live matches becomes more difficult and expensive, a large part of how young people interact with football.
However, EA has reportedly been unhappy with the cost of doing business with FIFA for years, and it appears that the $250 million a year they were required to pay late last year was a cash cow.
In the EA SPORTS FC announcement, EA showed off its “300+ licensing partners,” not only suggesting that the new game will still have the same realistic glitz as current FIFA titles. They then went on to mention how their “unique licensing portfolio”, including deals with international players’ union FIFPRO, a number of top leagues and shirt makers, would “remain alive” after FIFA. That’s at least sorted by name, match and kit.
It’s worth noting that, while not confirmed in that article, one of EA’s biggest additions over the past few years is the fully licensed Champions League and Europa League. How curious it would be if UEFA intervened in FIFA’s lunch by starring in one of the fans’ most everyday culturally relevant touchstones.
The move also appears to give more power to specific clubs, leagues and even players who are also grumpy in the game based on their similarities and attributes.
On the FIFA side, they likely decided to reveal their name to other game developers to produce a different product, which angered EA. After all, what would their so-called $250 million be if they didn’t even have the exclusive rights to make FIFA games?
While it’s easy to read EA SPORTS FC as a battle between EA and FIFA, it fuels a wider and escalating brand battle across football as different stakeholders scramble to get as much as possible. cash.
EA is one of the best at this, with FIFA, Madden, and the NHL’s Ultimate Team bringing in more than $1.6 billion — more than double the revenue of even the biggest football teams.
As cryptocurrency exchanges, currency creators and NFT projects continue to ramp up their investments in gaming and football, it also seems likely that EA will work with their new platform in this sector, whether it’s Socios, which many teams already have, or a different one. company.
You never know; some other publisher might jump at the chance to try out FIFA and challenge EA’s hegemony with an exciting new football game – FIFA 2K24? But then again, it’s not worth playing without a proper Crystal Palace away kit, is it?
